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If you have a kid on the South Coast who plays a sport, you probably saw a headline at the end of June and felt something drop. Let me give you the short answer first, because it is the one that matters most this month.
Massachusetts law did not change. Your child can still play.
Now the longer version.
On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that states are allowed to bar transgender girls and women from girls’ and women’s teams at public schools. The decision covered two cases together, West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote separately, agreeing in part and dissenting in part, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The two people at the center of those cases are not talking points. Lindsay Hecox wanted to try out for track and cross country at Boise State. Becky Pepper-Jackson is 15 and has been living publicly as a girl since third grade.
Read that again. Third grade. She has been herself for most of her life, and it went to the Supreme Court.
The ruling said states may pass these bans. Massachusetts has not passed one.
We are one of 21 states that let trans women and girls play on girls’ and women’s teams. State law has prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender identity in public schools since 2012. The MIAA handbook says a student “shall not be excluded from participation on a gender-specific sports team that is consistent with the student’s bona fide gender identity.”
Attorney General Andrea Campbell said it plainly after the decision came down: “Massachusetts law continues to protect transgender students, including student athletes who play sports in accordance with their gender identity.”
So if you are in New Bedford, Fall River, Taunton, or anywhere else on the South Coast, nothing about your child’s eligibility changed on June 30.
Travel. This is the part that has not gotten enough attention, and it is the practical thing to sort out before the fall season starts.
Jennifer Levi of Boston-based GLAD Law told WBUR the ruling “certainly could impact the places where Massachusetts athletes can play because Massachusetts has laws protecting transgender students and an obligation to ensure that its students remain protected.”
New Hampshire passed a law in 2024 barring trans girls in grades 5 through 12 from girls’ teams. A team that leaves Massachusetts is not always inside Massachusetts law anymore.
If your kid’s team schedules out of state, that is a fair and unremarkable question to bring to the athletic director now, in August, and not the night before the bus leaves. You are not making trouble by asking. You are doing what any parent does with a travel schedule.
On March 31, in Chiles v. Salazar, the Court ruled 8 to 1 that Colorado’s ban on so-called conversion therapy has to clear a much higher First Amendment bar when it is applied to talk therapy. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion, and the case went back to the lower courts.
Conversion practices are discredited by every major medical body. That was not the question in front of the Court, which turned on speech. Massachusetts passed its own ban on the practice for minors in 2019, signed by Governor Charlie Baker, and it is still on the books.
Ten days after the sports decision, PBS NewsHour’s Liz Landers sat down with Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project and the first out transgender attorney to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court. PBS posts the full transcript free, and it is worth reading start to finish.
Asked where the movement goes now, he did not soften it:
We’re turning to state courts, we’re turning to state legislatures, but we can’t abandon advocacy in the federal courts.
He also pushed back on the idea that bringing cases you might lose is a waste. “We are consistently still winning in the lower courts,” he said, “delaying some of the most egregious harms that our communities are facing.”
And on why public opinion moved, he gave a number instead of a mood. Between 2021 and 2025, he said, hundreds of millions of dollars went into narratives casting trans people as a threat. Trans people are less than 1 percent of the population.
Near the end, Landers asked where the movement goes after two years of setbacks. His answer:
Movements are long, and the fight for justice is a multigenerational fight.
Multigenerational is a heavy word for something that is actually small and repeatable. Around here it looks like a coffee hour in Fall River. It looks like one adult in a Taunton school who uses a kid’s right name without being asked twice. It looks like showing up to a school committee meeting on a Tuesday night when you would rather be home.
Strangio’s point about state legislatures is the one to hold onto. The action moves to state courts and state houses now, and Massachusetts has both. What stays protected here stays protected because people in places like New Bedford keep showing up for it. That has always been the arrangement.
We are here every week doing that work. If you have a young athlete and you are not sure where you stand, or you just want to talk it through with somebody who gets it, call us.
Sources: PBS NewsHour, WBUR, and SCOTUSblog.